Venezuelan musical producer Libero Laizzo, manager of the rock group Caramelos de Cianuro (Cyanide Candy), was found dead on a Caracas highway after being kidnapped earlier this week, the private TV channel Globovision said.
The producer, 35, whose body was found Friday, was shot in the chest, apparently because “he might have recognized one of his kidnappers,” the Globovision news anchor said, a speculation later posted to the channel’s online edition.
Spokespersons of the Cicpc investigative agency told Efe that in the next few hours there will be an official statement about the case.
“An unofficial version has it that the entrepreneur (kidnapped Thursday night) told his captors that he had a certain sum of money at home, so the individuals…called an associate, whom he apparently told to get the money” and deliver it, the private channel said.
Payment of the ransom was confirmed by Miguel Angel Gonzalez, guitarist of the Caramelos de Cianuro band on tour in Mexico, who said that despite getting the money “they killed him anyway.”
In a telephone call to Globovision from Mexico, Gonzalez said that the band members are “very affected” and that “the only reflection we all have is that they’re disappearing all of us, we’re all lined up, it will happen to all of us, it’s a way of life, it’s the criminals’ job.”
Venezuela has one of the highest rates of violence in the region with 48 murders for every 100,000 inhabitants.
“We haven’t been able to break through this unyielding minimum of 48 deaths for every 100,000 inhabitants - it’s a very high rate,” Interior Minister Tareck El Aissami said in January.
Here is Caramelos de Cianuro latest video.
